


Slap, Pull, Release

by Shenanigans



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Three Things, just a quick drabble request, mostly just trying isaac feels on because they fit just right, unrequited feels for the girl that gets away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three things Isaac Lahey learned from his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slap, Pull, Release

_Always wear your seat belt._

Isaac was nearly seventeen but he didn’t have a car. He rode his bike or ran. He took the bus, dropping his change with a musical chime as he shouldered back four or more seats to sling against the window. He’d lean his temple against the scratched glass, watching the world go by as he thought too hard about nothing.

They used to travel as a family. His Dad packing the wood paneled Jeep Cherokee with their bags, too high so that the back was just a mess of canvas and camping gear piled on top of coolers. Isaac would sleep in the back seat, Capri Sun packet empty and stuck to his cheek, mouth open as the hot dry air of Arizona peeled through the windows like a dusty sigh. Camden would read or slap at him idly, fingers sticky for the brief second before it cooled again, wicked away in the arid desert. The air smelled like heat and mesquite, the low mesa prickly with the sage gray green of scrub bushes and the lolling red of the desert. 

His Mom would be in the passenger seat, idly rambling about the magazine she was reading as his Father hummed along with the country station. The seats were crackling hot, but he’d later try to hold on to the way his mother’s hair went lighter in the summer, the curve of her smile that was smaller like Camden’s. His father didn’t smile much anymore so no one realized Isaac’s toothy grin came from that side of the family.

It was a Tuesday in August. Just a Tuesday like any other and he’d been kicking at Cam with rangy legs, shins aching with growing pains. He was young, eyes too big, teeth too big, ears too big. It matched his hands and his feet, coltish and wobbling into adolescence with a stuttering finality. His Dad had been driving for too long. Something. He didn’t really remember the moments before it, just the sound of his Mom unbuckling her seat belt and flipping around to push at his head and smack at Cam where he was crowing with laughter.

Accidents didn’t really slow down, it was just the way the mind remembered them that made it feel that way later. The Jeep had swerved, the only warning was a sharp inhale from his dad, the way he’d thrown out an arm to push his mom back against the seat and then a feeling of lightness. 

And then black.

Isaac had come to with his hands on the ceiling, buckled in and fingers tangled in the bloody mess of his mother’s hair as the engine ticked idly in the heat. It smelled like ozone and tar, the roiling thick smell of hot pavement and bent metal. Underneath had been the sweet cloying smell of blood. He’d know the scent anywhere now, but it always felt too close, to big to pinpoint- filling his nostrils and his memories.

If she’d been wearing her seat belt. If she’d been. If.

_Always have a fresh pair of socks._

Isaac always kept his sock drawer neat, ends tucked into each other and curled into small balls that could be stacked three high. After his Father died, he’d snuck back into the house, the glass still scattered on the floor like a promise. He didn’t spend too much time packing, just shoved the entirety of his sock drawer into the bottom of the faded green ruck sack. Three cardigans, two easy raglans, and fifteen white t-shirts folded with military precision on top of five pairs of jeans, one set of heavy work boots and his sneakers. He’d grabbed Cam’s pea-coat and three comics, the sleeves crinkling as he tucked them into the side. He’d left everything else and fled.

Derek had given him a milk crate at the abandoned train depot when he’d noticed the way Isaac had been carefully packing and repacking his clothes with the socks on top. Isaac had wet his lips, arm still stinging with the phantom ache of the break under the heavy maroon of the Henley he’d borrowed from him. “Thanks."

Derek huffed, turning away and Isaac had unpacked.

The loft was better with it’s blue velveteen couch and the scent of pack around him. He’d made his bed every morning, tucking the hospital corners tight and smearing his palms over the bedspread to iron out the wrinkles. The pillows sat side by side at the head and it felt like home.

After fifteen years in the Marines his dad had retired with his British wife and two boys, settling them in Northern California in a straight shot from Petaluma. Isaac had been the new kid, but they kept their cubby’s tidy and he always knew exactly where his pencils were next to the chubby pink eraser. After his Mom died, no one really questioned it when Cam signed up.

He’d always been Dad’s favorite anyway.

Isaac kept his space with a terrifying and scared precision until he arrived at Scott’s house. He’d set his bag down, stripped out of the shirt, starting to unfold it from inside out by rote and stopped. His skin pebbled as his hair dripped onto his shoulders. The room wasn’t neat, a bed tossed into the corner and covered in boxes of winter clothes. There was an elliptical machine shoved into a space that was littered with Christmas decorations. A desk was along the opposite wall with an old PC tower hooked up to what looked like a new monitor and a half dead inkjet printer. The dresser was half filled with clothes Scott had long since grown out of an old school papers and finger paintings. The nightstand was empty except for a battered Chicken Soup book that had been nicked from the hospital waiting room.

He’d stood in the center of the floor, eyes wide as he struggled to breathe and upended the ruck sack.

He kicked the socks, throwing the shirts around and raging with a quietness that blacked around the edges.

Later, he’d heard his father explaining to him that clean socks could be the difference between life and death. “A clean pair of socks," he’d demonstrated in his quiet way before the accident as he’d shown him how to fold them with quick practiced flicks of his wrist, “were the most important thing a man could have."

He’d sat on the bed, feeling the edge slump under his weight with a creak and bent, picking up his socks one by one and folding them together as he folded away his rage.

Isaac was quiet. Isaac was neat. Isaac was his father’s son.

_Don’t go straight for the boob grab, dummy, you have to touch at them lightly first until they shove them into your hands._

Cam and Becky went everywhere together up until he’d come home with a buzzed head and clear eyes that saw far across the rolling hills he called home. Isaac had sat sprawled in the grass, watching the way Cam would kiss her, slow and aching like he’d found something tender and perfect in the shape of her smile and the spaces between her ribs where his fingers fit just right. He watched the way she would go reckless under his breath, arching and pushing against him as she scrambled forward slightly to press tighter against him with a little mewl of sound.

He’d listen, on his back in bed to the low thumping noises they’d make the nights Dad worked the late shift at the graveyard. He’d hear the low muffled words and the higher smothered moans. Isaac wasn’t dumb, he knew what was going on.

It wasn’t until he met Erica that he really understood the way a man could want to touch something that burned them. She’d lounged into his life with a feral smile, lit up from the inside in an incandescent way that chased the shadows from his eyes and the lingering doubts from his smile. They’d sparked and laughed and he’d remembered.

She’d bit his lip, pushing tighter as she pulled his fingers higher, pressing the heavy weight of her tits against his palms and ground against the seam of his jeans with little hitching rolls. She’d pushed him back, slipped him on with a sigh, and left his hands touching at her. He’d watched, wide eyed and awed. He’d watched like it hurt to look and hurt more to look away. It had been red. It had been sour sweet kisses and the heat and wet of her tight as they fucked.

She’d collapsed in a fall of blonde hair, biting at his collarbones: pleased.

He tried to hold too tight and she’d danced away, singeing him and curling the edges of his memories as she slipped under Boyd’s arm and into the woods.

He’d gone for the grab. He knew better.


End file.
